thusspakezuska | May 4, 2010Samia has a very thoughtful analysis of that whole Boobquake biz...I'd recommend you read it first before going on with this post.
I love Samia because she is witty, she always makes me think, and often helps me see when I am missing big, important issues. But I am not sure I am in agreement with all her points this time. I started out with a reaction to the idea of Boobquake that was very similar to her post...why get all het up about some Iranian cleric when we did not see as much a fuss here in the U.S. over the Christian fundies who said similar shit about 9/11 and other natural…
thusspakezuska | May 4, 2010A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of yet another of the "death by a thousand paper cuts**" craptastic things I used to hate dealing with in my days in the scientific workforce. You know what I'm talking about. Could be a retreat, a workshop, a seminar, a meeting, a program, maybe even just a discussion, but whatever it is, diversity is the subject, explicit or implicit. On one occasion it was a discussion about whether a tiny little space should be set aside for students of a certain group. On another it was a pizza party for women students. But ever and anon, at such…
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2010From the Philadelphia Daily News (the same paper which recently brought a Pulitzer Prize to Philadelphia for amazing investigative reporting by Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman):
HOW WELL can a family of four eat on just $68.88 a week? For more than 38 million Americans, it's more than a matter of conjecture...To find out how well you can eat on food stamps, we asked two chefs and a magazine food editor to plan seven days of meals for a family of four using that budget: $68.88.
I like best the solutions proposed by Jose Garces, who went 66 cents over budget, and explains his solutions thus:…
thusspakezuska | April 28, 2010A reader sent me a link to this d00dly graph, What The Force Would Be Used For If It Actually Existed. If you don't want to bother to click through, the answer is: greater than 50%, pulling the remote to you because it is too far away; insignificant percentage, actually making a difference in the universe; all the remaining percentage, persuading women to undress. Wait, I can't keep typing because I'm laughing so, so much. Oh, those clever d00ds.
My correspondent wrote:
This is rather disturbing if you think about it. Using coercion to "persuade" a woman to undress: shades of rape…
thusspakezuska | April 26, 2010I was making a quick jog through the local supermarket the other night, seeking out cough drops and a few other things for a sad soul at home with the croup, when I rounded a corner and came upon this fresh new vision from hell:
And here I am wasting my extra cash on donations to food pantries for hungry humans in the greater Delaware Valley area. You, poor sap, may be throwing away cash on stupid causes like earthquake relief in Haiti, or trying to save birds from extinction. Let's just all live it up and make sure Fido has a nice Fresh Meal. Maybe we could give the leftovers to the…
thusspakezuska | April 23, 2010Sharon Astyk hates Earth Day. Really hates it. There she was, publicly hating it on its 40th anniversary, no less.
And most Earth Day programs send the same message. They say "you too can make a difference...and it will be convenient, mostly involve shopping and won't change your life. Here, take some baby steps, change your lightbulbs, plant one tomato" and come listen to some folkie music!"
Well, that can't be right, can it? Sadly, yes. As I commented on another of Sharon's posts,
Just saw a tv commercial for a compostable potato chip bag. According to the commercial, I can totally…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2010Today I googled the phrase "eyes on the prize". Here's an excerpt from one link that came up.
The fire hoses and police dogs. The Montgomery bus boycott. The march on Washington. You've probably seen scattered footage of these images, but no project ever connected pictures to context with the tenacity of Eyes on the Prize.
The 1987 PBS series brought the strategies and struggles of the civil rights movement to new generations worldwide. Now, after years of wrangling over copyright and licensing issues, Eyes is finally available on DVD for a new mass audience. (It was already available for…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2010We are a mere ten years into the 21st century. No jet packs for all yet, but things are moving at a lightning pace at Yale in the policy area.
After more than a quarter century of debate, Yale faculty members are now barred from sexual relationships with undergraduates--not just their own students, but any Yale undergrads.
Well you may ask: can we still nail grad students and postdocs?
Look: PI's and/or faculty really should just satisfy their sexual needs elsewhere. Not with the students, not with the grad students, not with the postdocs. It is not good for anyone. I know, I know, you…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2010Reader Jason commented on my post about compulsory smiling thusly:
I just wanted to thank everyone for the comments here. They've been enlightening... to be honest I had never heard of anyone being ordered to smile outside of greeter/public relation jobs (chalk it up to youthful naivete, I suppose). With that in mind when I first read the post it struck me as an overreaction to something minor, but it's hard to argue with a few dozen women from all over with the exact same stories and reactions.
I don't know if I've ever been guilty of this behavior in my life (I hope not, though I am a…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2010I was catching up on reading at Female Science Professor's place and came across her post: Women Girls.
FSP, as far as I can tell, seems to be saying that the young ones these days are all hip with the term "girl" for women even into their 30's because...I don't know why, it's a peer thing, and we old biddies wouldn't understand. We must accept that the times they are a-changing. Girls just wanna have fun?
Perusing the comments, I gather that "woman" is stodgy, or P.C. (!), and too mature and "girls" these days are putting off adulthood, and can't think of themselves as women.
To this…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2010The other day, a male friend of mine was at the grocery store in the check out line. He was not feeling particularly happy, and, I guess, was frowning a little. A dude in line behind him tapped him on his shoulder to get his attention and when he turned around, the dude said, in a bright voice, "You dropped something," and was pointing to the floor. My male friend looked down and said, "I don't see anything." The dude then told him, "You dropped your smile." My male friend was not amused. He turned around going back to his business saying, "Oh, OK." The man proceeded to walk away mumbling…
thusspakezuska | April 6, 2010I've been taking care of my mother's finances for well over two years now, since she moved from the house she lived in all her life to an assisted living home. It still astonishes me, sometimes, that managing her paperwork requires more time and effort than managing my own.
I wrote here about the sense of sadness and loss involved with something seemingly as straightforward as establishing a new bank account to make it easier for me to manage mom's finances.
Loss accumulates and accelerates in one's lifetime. Last January [2008], we moved Mom to assisted living...today I wrote to the…
thusspakezuska | April 1, 2010So the word on the street is that Greg Laden is taking his eponymous blog and moving on over to the Discover network blogs. He must have had a major, major falling out with PZ because I didn't think he would ever leave SciBlogs as long as PZ is here. Seeing as how Ed Yong recently decamped for Discover, could this mean that GL is now Ed Yong's fanboi????
thusspakezuska | March 26, 2010March is women's history month, but don't let that circumscribe your fun. You can get together with a posse of your like-minded women friends and mock mansplainers anytime. Now, I know many of you have just recently learned that there even existed a name you could attach to this annoying behavior plaguing your existence. Believe me, I know how important naming experience is - that's why I have a whole category assigned to the topic. But your joy need not begin and end with just knowing that the craptastic manifestations you've been subjected to are (1) not your fault, (2) part of a larger…
thusspakezuska | March 25, 2010Most families have some set of stories they tell each other over and over again. Generally people think they are just getting together and sharing a good laugh over a funny story, or a hardship turned into laughter with the passage of time. But repeating these stock fables is a way of telling the story of the family itself, and of binding family members together in shared reminiscences that may also encode a set of shared values.
Sometimes the moralistic family story telling can be limiting and constricting, as when one comes home from the fancy new life with wider horizons carefully built…
thusspakezuska | March 14, 2010Over at the mansplaining thread, you can read literally hundreds of hilarious, annoying, frustrating, heartbreaking stories of how women are constantly subjected to intrusive, incessant, insensitive, inane mansplaining. Interspersed you will also find comments from d00dly d00ds whinging away about how awful it is that women are talking so MEAN about men, and their mansplanations about how mansplaining doesn't exist. Then some douche tried to coin the phrase femsplaining.
Femsplaining, as best I can tell, is a phenomenon that arises in the following manner:
(1) A woman points out an…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010This is the third and final part of a multi-part presentation of a sample chapter from a forthcoming book, The Madame Curie Complex. Part One can be found here. Part Two can be found here.
Recently I was approached with an offer to share with my readers a sample chapter from a forthcoming book called The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science. A caveat: I have not read the whole book, and offering the sample chapter here for you to read does not constitute an endorsement by me of the book. But I was sufficiently intrigued by the sample chapter I read to think it…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010This is part two of a multi-part presentation of a sample chapter from a forthcoming book, The Madame Curie Complex. Part One can be found here. Part Three can be found here.
Recently I was approached with an offer to share with my readers a sample chapter from a forthcoming book called The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science. A caveat: I have not read the whole book, and offering the sample chapter here for you to read does not constitute an endorsement by me of the book. But I was sufficiently intrigued by the sample chapter I read to think it was worth sharing…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010That mansplainer thread just won't quit - it is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, if you can call continuing recitations of the endless ways women are constantly mansplained by the d00dly mainsplainers of the world a "gift". Along with the mansplainer d00ds who show up to mansplain how mansplaining does not exist, should not be called mansplaining if it does exist, is a benign and non-sexist practice if it does exist, and anyway, I THOUGHT THIS WAS SCIENCEBLOGS WHAT ABOUT THE SCIENCE DEAR GOD WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE POOR SCIENCE????
Which brings us to Ace's most excellent and apropos…
thusspakezuska | March 10, 2010This is part one of a multi-part presentation of a sample chapter from a forthcoming book, The Madame Curie Complex. Part Two can be found here. Part Three can be found here.
This is something a little different for TSZ. Recently I was approached with an offer to share with my readers a sample chapter from a forthcoming book called The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science. A caveat: I have not read the whole book, and offering the sample chapter here for you to read does not constitute an endorsement by me of the book. But I was sufficiently intrigued by the…